In April, the FSFE organised its annual
Free
Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW): a meeting point for
legal experts from all over the world to discuss issues and best practices
surrounding Free Software licences. This year marks the 10th anniversary
of the LLW which was celebrated with the record number of participants:
120 top legal experts and technologists came all the way down to Barcelona
(Spain) to spend 3 full days discussing legal challenges around Free Software.

This year, the workshop was held under theme "Restart". Based on the
topics discussed in the previous editions,
it seemed that several prominent discussions needed to be reopened in
order to address emerging challenges. Experts had the opportunity to
debate on various legal issues, including but not limited to: open data
and hardware, open government, tooling for lawyers, software patents,
copyright trolls and other existing challenges for Free Software compliance,
by attending more than 35 presentations of internationally distinguished
speakers with long-standing contribution in the field.

Admission to the event was open to all
Legal Network
members, while the whole event was covered under the
Chatham
House Rule, enabling confidential discussions under fair terms for
all the participants.

The part of event was covered by Jake Edge from LWN.net, who
underlined the following discussions during the workshop:

Shane Coughlan, Armijn Hemel and Mark Radcliffe participated in a panel
discussing the rise of the
copyright troll. Despite copyright trolls not being something new
to the Free Software legal world, the three panelists analysed the
methodology behind such enforcement efforts, based on McHardy's case
in Germany, and discussed ways to address that problem through governance
of Free Software projects.

The FSFE program manager, Max Mehl shared with the audience the
FSFE's concerns about the EU radio equipment directive
(RED). RED might be leading device makers to lock down their hardware,
stripping users and vendors from their right to install alternative software
of their choice on it. Existing legal uncertainty over newly introduced
requirements for hardware manufacturers poses a real threat to Free Software
enterprises and projects, thus a timely response to these concerns is
critical for software freedom on all devices that emit and/or receive
radio waves, including laptops and smartphones. Max Mehl presented
the
Joint Statement against Radio Lockdown, signed by almost 50 organisations
and companies, and invited everyone to take part in the relevant discussions
by subscribing to the dedicated mailing list.

Luis Villa, as one of the speakers presenting on open data,
shed light on the legal implications
that need to be taken into account, especially with regard to the data
sets used by machine-learning systems. Privacy concerns, cross-jurisdictional
issues, copyright claims and an emerging right to explanation are all
open legal questions, waiting for a not-so-easy response, according to
Luis Villa. A move towards open data has already begun in this area but
the legal difficulties remain: can a copyright licence, albeit open*,
address all these issues? The regulatory response from the governments
may also not be the best solution to provide necessary leverage, according
to Luis Villa.

In the Free Software world, the supply chain is perplexing and global,
characterised by compliance challenges within numerous Free Software
licences. Shane Coughlan described the OpenChain project
as the means that helps companies in the supply chain to keep track of
their compliance, irrespective of the preferred Free Software licence.

Another recent effort from the pioneers of the GPL compliance - Shane
Coughlan and Armijn Hemel - was also presented during the workshop:
Practical GPL Compliance
is designed to guide individuals and companies for better GPL compliance
when working with Free Software.

Last but not least, this year marked also a "restart" for our
long-serving Fiduciary Licensing Agreement (FLA).
The FLA is a well-balanced contributor agreement, which gives the trustee
responsible power to make sure the contributed software always remain
free and open. Matija Šuklje, the previous FSFE's Legal Coordinator and
the main driving force behind the FLA update, presented the challenges,
process and changes that led to the FLA-2.0. The biggest points of the
update are that the FLA now also covers patents and enables more practical
outbound licensing options, including a reference to an external licensing
policy. In addition, the new wording is much improved both in its compatibility
with more jurisdictions as well as being easier to understand and apply.
The final text and a new website are to launch in the coming weeks,
so watch this space.

The workshop would not have been possible without the generous support
of all the event's sponsors. In particular, we would like to thank our
Platinum Sponsors: Intel, Red Hat and The Linux Foundation.

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About FSFE

Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology.

Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important
that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software
gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software.
These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of
speech, freedom of press and privacy.